Crazy Me – Part 3 [(The Day of) The Match]

My second day in South Bend was to be the big day, the day of the actual match – BVB Borussia Dortmund vs. FC Liverpool. At first, in the morning, I fortified myself in a nearby café with a quite substantial [even if I had ordered the half-portion only] breakfast, …

… and then had myself driven [with parking-fees of $40 and $60 I preferred not to use my rental] by a “Lyft” driver to the stadium for the tailgating. The parking-fees on the parking-lots near the stadiums are really horrendous hereabouts! For my trip using “Lyft” I paid less than $10, and that even included the tip.

Yoy Might Not Recognize Me: in the Lft-Hand Quadrant, Near the Upper Edge, in the Yellow Polo Shirt

The stadium [it takes a little over 75,000 people] was not quite full, as the pictures show. We were not told how many attended. My guess would be around or slightly above 50,000. The stadium is a typical American Football stadium, which means it is wider and more open than a specially-built soccer arena in Germany, and thus can never transmit the same dense atmosphere as for example the Iduna-Park Stadium in Dortmund or the Anfield Road in Liverpool. In spite of this it was quite something to see these two teams play. Even if it was a friendly and not a real competition, both teams didn’t show that. They were at it wholeheartedly, and either side wanted to win. Thus a good match developed, with quite a bit of back and forth. And best of all: in the end Dortmund won – not 3:1 as the year before in Charlotte/NC, but “only” 3:2. It still was a victory over this year’s winner of the Champions League. Not a bad start for the season and a good omen, hopefully.

My seat close to the pitch in row three, near the midfield line, was quite a good one, but if I had been able to find out beforehand on which side of the field the Dortmund bench would have been, I would have tried to get a seat just behind that. Unfortunately there was no previous information to be gained. Everything was way too much focused on Liverpool, and thus both benches on the map for the seats were marked as “Reds’ Bench”. This, to my mind, shows that Liverpool is marketed much better here in the US – much of that may be due to the language advantage – that Dortmund is. It started with the marquees above the stands, which showed ads for Liverpool only, and continued with the information about and praise of, respectively, this club, and ended with the fact that during the teams’ marching in and the playing of the national anthem of the US only Liverpool’s banner was shown on the pitch. In addition to that, the colour red really overwhelmed yellow-and-black.

Btw, this was only the 5th soccer match I have watched live in a stadium in all my life! And it proved my previous experience right: you get a way better view of the match itself on TV [I did watch the recorded match at home later] because the camera nearly always zooms in and shows you the parts of the field where the action is and also close-ups. In the stadium you nearly never are that close to the action. But what no showing on TV can do: let you experience the very special atmosphere of the match. That’s something you need to be in the stadium for to experience it first-hand.

After the match I found it rather difficult to get home. Of course I had taken into account that masses of people would be leaving the stadium at the same time and that it wouldn’t be easy to find a taxi or get a “Lyft” or “Uber” chauffeur, but never had I anticipated how far I would have had to walk to get to an area where I would have a reasonable chance to find one or the other. First of all a wide area around the stadium was cordoned off for all incoming vehicular traffic, only allowing cars to leave the parking-lots, and then further out the streets were totally blocked. A taxi or any other individual transport would have taken an hour or more to get through to me. I had already walked more than 2 miles before I was in an area where I would have had some chance at least to be picked up. But then there was the problem of telling the pick-up service the address [street name AND house number] – in the dark I could barely figure out the former, and the latter not at all. And thus I decided, as I had already walked about half the way to my accommodation, to walk the remainder to, and after slightly more than 4 miles of walking and after a tad more than one hour after leaving the stadium, I was back in my room, tired and footsore, with blisters, and totally wet from sweat. Talking of wet with sweat: the day had been extremely hot [over 105 degrees] and humid, and even that late at night – shortly before midnight – it was still unpleasant. All the more happy I was about the well-functioning A/C in my room and a cold beer in the fridge – even if it wasn’t a German one.

My plan for the next day was to drive to Chicago for a meet with the team [they were supposed to be at a sports store, among others for autographs], but that was not to be. More about that in my next posting.

Glad you like my post, John. Btw, now – after I had seen the TV coverage here and then had had a closer look at my pictures from walking around the campus, I now know what you were talking about when you mentioned “Touch-Down Jesus”.

Germany is so beautiful and well organized. I often think I would like to live there, but won’t, because like much of Europe, they have killed off all there indigenous wild animals.
I actually prefer the company of most wild animals.